


April 25th Is The Perfect Date

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Didn't Know They Were Dating, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 00:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19030822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: Mulder keeps trying to ask Scully out on a date, but she seems oblivious.





	April 25th Is The Perfect Date

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: n/a  
> A/N: For the Fic Is Medicine Challenge prompt “Mulder keeps trying to ask Scully out on a date”.

They emerged from the airport frowsy and rumpled, squinting into the gold sunset. Mulder jerked his chin toward the parking. “Come on. I drove. I’ll take you home.”

“Mulder, you don’t have to drive all the way to Maryland,” Scully protested. “I’ll just get a cab.”

They looked at the line. Scully looked back at Mulder. “Maybe you could drop me in the city.”

Their bags rattled on the asphalt as the wheels caught. Mulder put them both in his trunk. They climbed into his car, the familiarity of it tempered by the unease of transit. The couch: that would be where they truly landed.

“Dinner?” Mulder suggested. “I know a great little Cuban place.”

“I have some frozen meals,” she said absently, looking out the window. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said, and cracked a sunflower seed. 

\+ + + + 

“Hey, Scully, I got tickets to the football game and Danny can’t make it,” he said, waving two slender pieces of paper in her face. “What do you say? America’s favorite game?”

“That’s baseball,” she said absently, tapping away at the keyboard. “And thank you, but no. I need to finish this report.”

“Game’s not until tomorrow,” he said.

“Maybe next time,” she told him. “My new issue of JAMA came in and there’s an article I’m really interested in. Plus, my sister is coming to town. Maybe Pendrell would want to go? Or Skinner?”

“Hah,” Mulder said. “Next time.”

\+ + + +

“Baseball tickets,” he said. “You. Me. Hot dogs. Beer. And before you ask, no, neither of the teams have a racial slur in their name.” 

“That’s a relief,” she said. “But I really need to clean my apartment this weekend.”

He stared at her. “Baseball, Scully. America’s favorite game, actually. The sport of kings.”

“That’s horse racing.”

“I promise it’ll be more fun than scrubbing your bathtub,” he said.

“Unless you’re offering to scrub my bathtub, I can’t make it,” she said. “And I hope that’s not a euphemism.”

“My euphemisms are better than that,” he said, affronted.

\+ + + +

Concert tickets to the symphony, courtesy of his friend in the Senate. Dinner. Drinks. The new niche film. The summer blockbuster. The art gallery. Every time, she turned him down with an absent smile. Scully would go with him to the most ridiculous places, but it was never anything he could call a date. There was always some kind of link to work, some plausible deniability.

“She’s too smart for you,” Frohike said.

“I know,” Mulder told him ruefully.

“Maybe you should just let her know how you feel?” Byers suggested.

“Ugh,” Langly said. “Or not.”

“Thank you, boys,” Mulder said, scraping his fork through the remains of a plate of huevos rancheros. “Very helpful.”

\+ + + + 

Years later, when they were together, he pulled her close in the bed and nestled his cheek against her hair.

“Can you believe our first date was at the baseball field?” he murmured.

“That wasn’t our first date,” she told him. 

“What?” he said. 

“Mulder, we’ve been on hundreds of dates,” she said, rolling over in his arms and gazing at him. “Diner dinners. Midnight milkshakes where we didn’t even bother with two straws. Every time we shared a piece of pie. Not to mention that haunted house on Christmas.”

“That was all work,” he protested.

“There was clear intent,” she teased. “I saw how you licked that whipped cream off the fork before you handed it to me. It was clearly foreshadowing of your lingual abilities.”

“I am fluent in tongues,” he said smugly.

“Every blatantly unnecessary trip to the Smithsonian,” she continued. “Every rendezvous by the Potomac under the cherry blossoms. Every time you came over to my place and passed out watching a movie or staring at a photograph.”

“Hollywood,” he suggested.

“Well, by that time, it should have been obvious that it was a date,” she said, her hand sliding along his back. “But yes, everything we did in Hollywood was a date.”

“A Skinner-approved date,” he said thoughtfully.

“A Skinner-mandated date,” she corrected, and they both looked at each other.

“Huh,” he said. “I did not see that coming.”

“Apparently Skinner did,” she said. 

“That’s why he has the big office,” Mulder told her, nuzzling at her.

“We should have sex on his desk,” Scully said in a husky voice. “After all, he is partially responsible for this situation.”

Mulder paused. “I’m sure you didn’t actually mean that, but I’m into it anyway.”

“I knew you would be,” she said, and he pulled her on top of her as the conversation moved into a much more kinetic vocabulary.


End file.
